Crime world loses one of its finest

"If I had a gun at this moment, first of all I would get even" ... Kath Pettingill. Photo: Simon O'Dwyer

Victor George Peirce was on every criminal list worth compiling. But this time the suspect is the victim.

For 20 years he was the man police first thought of when a major crime was committed.

But this time Victor George Peirce has the ultimate alibi - he himself was the victim of a killer's bullet.

Now police fear a crime war after Peirce's mother, Kath Pettingill, said on radio she was determined to avenge her son's death, saying she believed other criminals had shot him.

"If I had a gun at this moment, first of all I would get even," she said, adding she would have gladly taken the bullet for her son.

Victoria Police assistant commissioner Bob Falconer said no tears should be shed over Peirce's death, but notorious criminal Mark "Chopper" Read offered a eulogy of sorts for a man he had known since they were teenagers. ");document.write("

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Read said he did not have a bad word to say about Peirce, who he nevertheless described as a "major, major player in the cocaine industry".

"I knew him well, he wasn't a bad bloke," Read said.

Peirce, 42, was shot dead as he sat in his car in a Port Melbourne street in what is believed to be a drug-related execution.

Police said a vehicle containing two men had pulled up alongside Peirce's car about 9.20pm on Wednesday.

One of the men got out and shot Peirce several times, before escaping in the car. Police yesterday recovered the burnt-out shell of a stolen 1980s Holden Commodore sedan believed to have been used by the gunman and his driver.

Peirce was a career criminal from a family of career criminals. His mother, as a brothel keeper, became the matriarch of one of Australia's most prolific underworld clans.

Victor Peirce is the third of her six sons to die. Jamie Pettingill was 21 when he was the victim of a drug overdose, the result of a "hotshot", according to his mother, and Dennis Allen died of heart disease aged 35 while awaiting trial for murder.

A fourth son, Peter Allen, 49, has spent most of his life in jail but was released from custody this week after being granted bail on a charge of armed robbery.

It was alleged Allen robbed a man at knifepoint in January this year. With the other brothers - Trevor Pettingill and Lex Peirce - they were regarded as Australia's most notorious gun and drug dealers in the 1980s.

But it was as the prime suspect in the Walsh Street murders - the 1988 assassinations of police officers Steven Tynan and Damien Eyre - that Victor Peirce became most widely known.

Along with his brother Trevor and their mates Peter David McEvoy and Anthony Leigh Farrell, Peirce faced trial over the murders.

Even though he and his alleged accomplices were acquitted, police still think Peirce fired the gun that killed the two young constables. Peirce was in custody for more than two years over the Walsh Street murders, but the most serious charge he was ever convicted of was one of drug dealing, for which he received a six-year sentence.

More intriguing than Peirce's list of convictions, though,

is the list of crimes and criminal figures linked to him and

his family.

His mother was interviewed in relation to Melbourne's Great Bookie Robbery, some of his brothers were linked to the Russell Street bombing in which a woman police officer was killed, and they were also associates of disgraced NSW detective Roger Rogerson.

The Pettingill clan was also closely linked to a group of notorious Melbourne criminals that included Mark Militano, Frank Valastro, Jedd Houghton, Graham Jensen and Gary Abdallah, all of whom were shot dead by police, and Mark and Jason Moran.

Another notorious criminal, Raymond John Denning, once told police the Morans had been involved in an armed robbery that supposedly led to the Walsh Street murders.

Kath Pettingill said yesterday her son had been clean for the past four years and she could not determine a clear motive for the shooting. She told Melbourne radio that those responsible for the murder could run, but they could not hide.

Police said they feared underworld reprisals would follow the execution-style killing.

A detective who worked on the Tynan-Eyre Taskforce said the shooting was "an occupational hazard for these guys".

Charlie Nikakis, the lawyer to the Pettingill family, said that at the time of his death Peirce was working as a labourer.

"The last time he was in court was over a shitty little shoplifting, from my recollection, which has got to be years ago," he said.

But Mr Falconer had no sympathy: "If you live by the sword, you die by the sword. There are those like me who believe in karma, there are others who believe in heavenly justice. I suspect some of them will think that heavenly justice has prevailed."